Replacement for Skype With Ekiga or Twinkle or Coccinella or SIP Communicator for Gtalk

Apr 26th, 2009

In my previous post I have expressed my concern over google and its products . Google always supporting the wonderful open source projects fails to develop its products in GNU/Linux operating systems. For example the latest Chrome is only available for windows, also gtalk . I was hearing about skype for the first time when I joined ISPG on 27th of November 2007 . But I was able to recognise that skype is a proprietary software .So today I got some time to look into the open source softwares which can replace skype, which will increase security . As the source code of the propritery softwares are not open we are not sure how its working . Only the developer knows about the working . Our chat and files that are passed may or may not be secure . So we need open source softwares and want to promote such softwares . These are some of the list that supports VoIP . – Ekiga ( Replacement for Skype ) – Twinkle ( Replacement for Skype ) – Coccinella – QuteCom previously called WengoPhone – SIP Communicator are some of them . Ekiga will be installed in Ubuntu by default in 9.04 . I don’t remember for the older versions, its installed or not . Ekiga is a real replacement for skype . You need an ekiga account as like the skype itself . Then you can call from your desktop to desktop or to other land lines if you have credit . The call rates and all are in the https://www.diamondcard.us/exec/voip-rep-acc-type?secRel=/secondary/e/ekiga&priRel=/templates&secId=ekiga&lc= . You can copy and paste it in your url if you love to know about it . The scrren shot of the ekiga is downloaded from the site . You can look into the site http://www.ekiga.org/index.php?rub=2 for the features list. I was looking the gnu.org and reading about the high priority projects . The one among them was the replacement for skype . From there I got the list of wonderful projects . When I looked more about them , its amazing and it has even more than skype offers . I was using empathy as there was no gtalk for linux . Gtalk is available for Windows XP . As I don’t need gtalk for Vista and all , I don’t even know whether there is any too . I downloaded the coccinella project and try it, which is something like the gtalk or empathy . We can send files , supports VoIP etc as in gtalk itself . The screenshot of it is taken when I am using from my lap . You can see a detailed list of features from http://thecoccinella.org/about . As I don’t want to make a copy from ther itself . Another one issip communicator, which is a wonderful open source project developed in Java , which supports the most instant messaging and telephony protocols . They supports SIP, Jabber, AIM/ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, Bonjour, IRC, RSS and more coming soon . It was pidgin which supports at earlier , but now many more open source projects are available under the GNU/GPL licence . The coccinella and sip communicator has its own features. The coccinella has a support to draw pictures and show the other user with out chatting . Its a great feature I think . So each and every software has its own roles . I am running out of time, so I am mising a lot to write . So giving the links below . So you can have a look , if you love to use open source and these projects and decide to choose which one suits best for you . Ekiga Features : http://www.ekiga.org/index.php?rub=2 Twinkle Features : http://www.xs4all.nl/~mfnboer/twinkle/index.html Coccinella Features : http://thecoccinella.org/about QuteCom : http://www.qutecom.org/ SIP Communicator : http://www.sip-communicator.org